'Addicted to Puritanism': Philosophical and theological relations between Scotland and the United Provinces in the first half of the seventeenth century

This chapter attempts to fill in some of the gaps and rectify the shortcomings in existing accounts of Scottish-Dutch philosophical and theological connections in the first half of the seventeenth century: connections based on Presbyterianism and on its philosophical underpinning in reformed Aristotelianism. In particular, the chapter addresses the question of what exactly these connections looked like and how they emerged and evolved. It also attempts to formulate an answer to the questions of when, why, and how the nature of these links changed in the middle of the seventeenth century. As such, this chapter builds on previous research, on some economic and political aspects of the (early) seventeenth century Scottish-Dutch relationship on the one hand, and on Scotland’s relationship with the later seventeenth-century European Republic of Letters on the other. Here, the Scottish-Dutch connections are examined from a viewpoint of equality.